Monthly Archives: November 2015

Remember “RoboCop,” Paul Verhoeven’s landmark sci-fi thriller movie? A future monolithic corporation controls a crime-infested Detroit. It transforms a dead police officer into a cybernetic law-enforcement “unit” called RoboCop. The cyborg hero devastates urban criminality, and soon the streets are safe.[1] RoboCop is little more than an cybernetic enforcement drone; the remains of his humanity is an open question.

Well, science fiction, warts and all, sometimes gives us as good an eye on the present as on the future, even though its plot and characters may be weak or its tone juvenile. Such stories often point to the problems of the present in the guise of a technically advanced future. “Robocop” is something more than human, but he is also dehumanized by his cyber-mechanization. His modus operandi is always overpowering force of violence – a high-tech old west “shoot first and ask questions later” modality. However, in the real world cops are people too.

The death of Albuquerque police officer Daniel Webster, after being shot in a routine traffic stop, occurred in the context of widespread public criticism of the excessive use of force and high rate of killings by Albuquerque police in the previous decade. The Department seemed in seriously dysfunctional when a Justice Department investigation led to specific requirements for reform. Yet, the community energetically rallied around Officer Webster and his family while he lay struggling to live.

Community support grew even stronger when Officer Webster died a few days after the shooting. People came forward and lauded him as a true hero, a “guardian angel” who had gone above and beyond the official duties of his job whenever he had the opportunity to help people in need. Officer Webster, a combat veteran, evidently was widely recognized for being a true peace officer. The growing trend toward drone cops, completely isolated from the people, is the exact opposite. Officer Webster seemed an exception to the emerging rule in policing.

Today, drone bombings and missile attacks on human “targets” abroad have proliferated on the presumption that “suspicious activity” may involve terrorists in Yemen, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. The adaptation of that mental model of operating in “conflict zones” to police practices by civilian “law enforcement” is well underway, although fundamentally flawed. At the same time, presidential “hit lists” must give us pause, even if the targets are overseas. In so-called “targeted killing,” – a term that conjures images of precision, likely unjustified – pretty much everyone near the target is defined as “the enemy” unless proven otherwise. So called “collateral damage” is widespread, though under-reported via re-definition. Children in Yemen are called “terrorists in training” by drone operators at their stations back in Nevada.

At what point in the militarization of domestic law enforcement do neighborhoods become “combat zones,” and to what extent, does enforcement take the place of law? And what is the result? What is the effect of local police in the U.S. adopting the combat model of operations? Clearly, it is already happening in various jurisdictions around the “homeland.”[2] We’ve seen some of the result already. The destruction of small villages in Yemen, killing innocent civilians, is analogous to the excessive use of force and indiscriminate shooting of civilians on city streets across the “homeland.”

As dangerous as drones over our cities and towns may become for aviation, no less to civil liberties and human rights, an even more dangerous “dronification” is happening to police officers themselves. They are being turned into Drone Cops. To understand what a drone cop is, consider the contrast with the traditional concept of law enforcement and the role of peace officer in communities. Traditional peace officers were members of their community tasked with assuring the safety and security of the citizenry. They knew their neighbors.

What distinguishes a drone from a manned aircraft? It is the pilot of course. Yes, on-the-ground operators do “pilot” the drones. The technology of “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs) allows for two possible tasks: surveillance and targeted killing. Perhaps inadvertently, they sometimes bomb wedding parties and other innocent gatherings. This may be due to “faulty intelligence” (weak electronic information compounded by cavalier attitudes about who may be defined as an “enemy”). But it is also caused by a blurring of definitions of “enemy” vs. “civilian.” A similar blurring results as police are dehumanized and become Drone Cops, who also have come to have just two tasks: surveillance and targeting for violence too often involving killing.

The idea, for example, that any Afghan male who seems to be of an age suitable for military service is to be predefined as a “terrorist” unless subsequent to his death he is proven otherwise, is beyond Kafka in its absurdity. But it is convenient for the trigger-happy commanding officer “managing” an ad hoc conflict zone in a non-war. A similar mindset seems increasingly prevalent in urban law enforcement circles. Young men of color are routinely pre-defined as criminal without regard to circumstance or behavior. They become dehumanized “enemies.”

The death toll for civilians in the conflict zones that has been created by the questionably named “War on Terror,” keeps rising without consequence for the presidentially sanctioned killers. Some who found their own dehumanization to be intolerable have become whistle-blowers.[3] Unverified distant technical means, such as a cell phone being near a location, are used to target persons on a “kill list.” The illegality of extra-judicial assassination aside, the essence of the exercise is its indiscriminate practice of terrorizing citizens of other nations. The meaning of terror is heightened by drone strikes in far away places. What can be more terrifying than a drone attack on your village? The culture of unending war produces terrorist enemies by its own terrorist practices. Terror is also a product of the unending “war on drugs” by Drone Cops, which ultimately becomes a war on vulnerable people.Part II of this essay will address the replacement of the human decision-maker in law enforcement with the application of technology to control populations.
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[1] Netflix description accessed at: http://dvd.netflix.com/Search?v1=RoboCop&oq=roboc&ac_posn=1
[2] A strange term, “homeland.” It is akin to the terms “fatherland” and “motherland,” which connote nationalistic ideologies, usually asserted by empires. It is interesting to note that the term came into use in the United States largely in response to the attacks of 9/11, which were the first major successful retaliatory actions by deranged Middle East adversaries who identify U.S. military presence, occupations, and actions as a threat to their societies. The blurring of the distinction between foreign combat zones and “the homeland” by the 9/11 attacks seems to have brought the term to use as attempts were made to reorganize security within the nation along the lines of military security at the edges of empire. The implications of all this for domestic law enforcement include the ease with which municipal police departments have become militarized, both in equipment and in attitudes toward the public, both of which foster an image of the public as potential “enemy combatants” and blur any distinction between citizen and criminal.
[3] Four drone-war whistle blowers told their stories of personal dehumanization and indiscriminate killing-at-a-distance on Democracy Now!, November 20, 2015. Accessed at: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/20/exclusive_air_force_whistleblowers_risk_prosecution

Humanity must minimize the chaos of a catastrophic convergence of accelerating climate destabilization, growing poverty and food shortages, armed conflict, and massive migrations around the world. Otherwise, while the old plutocratic order will be destroyed, nothing viable will emerge to replace it. A new form of “creative destruction” must occur for human survival. A new Great Transformation of humanity’s relationship with our earth systems has to happen. It will be very complex and difficult, and “success” is unpredictable.

While it is hard to imagine, a massive social transformation in all industrially developed nations is necessary very soon. Social transformation is no simple matter. How do you turn around the most powerful institutions in the history of humanity? How do you redirect the fundamental thrust of distorted economies? Well, maybe you don’t. It just might be that the only way to stem the tide of anthropogenic economic and climate destabilization is to resist its continued domination. But that resistance must be indirect, since the corporate state has a monopoly on physical power. Resistance must take the form of replacing the very institutions that individuals and groups do not have the power to directly transform. As R. Buckminster Fuller is often quoted:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

While that may not always be true, it certainly is when confronted by the overwhelming power of the corporate state and all the physical force that entails. The New American Revolution will be one of replacement, not of fighting the existing reality in order to overthrow or destroy it. In the intellectual history of economics itself we find a concept that recognized the destructive power of replacement through creativity. Joseph Schumpeter [1] popularized the notion of “creative destruction” in economics as a theory of economic innovation. It refers to a process within economies “that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”

The concept has since been used by orthodox neo-liberal “free-market” economists and politicians to justify the destructive effects of any innovation produced by technology or the investment of capital. Innovation may destroy environments or peoples’ livelihood or health, but that is deemed okay because it results in “economic growth,” the end-all of finance capital. Ideologically, it has been a defense of the unregulated right of finance capital to plunder the planet.

However, we may take the liberty of re-framing the concept of creative destruction in an entirely new light, given the circumstance we find ourselves in. We must turn away from the destructive economics of finance capital. We must resist its inherently destructive force by withdrawing from participation. We must replace it by creating new ecological forms of economics in local and regional contexts.[2] Economic systems exist only by people participate in them. We must form new human scale economic relationships, thus creating a new economy. If we do that on a sufficient scale, much of the perpetual-growth economy that finance capital sustains will inevitably be destroyed. Its markets will simply contract into oblivion. In Fuller’s terms, we must build “a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The perpetual-growth economy driven by finance capital certainly is obsolete. By executing the innovations needed to create a new ecological economy, we will automatically destroy the old, mostly by ignoring it. It will wither away by disinterest and disuse. Now that would be a far more positive form of creative destruction than imagined by either Marxist or neo-liberal economists. Unlike them, we must realize that there is no inevitable course of history; there is no invisible hand or inevitable stages of development. We must choose.

“Progress” may very likely come crashing down upon us – or not. It is our choice. We must create our new ecological economy amidst the ruins of financial capital. The path to human survival will be extremely difficult, if taken. The ‘business as usual’ alternative would be beyond difficult; it would be suicidal. We are at a crossroads between following the old path of ecological destruction by repeating the mistakes of our economic history, and forging a new path of creating a viable ecological economy that we can live with.
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[1] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942). New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.
[2] David C. Korten, Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015) conceptualizes a new way to envision human economies and to create them in harmony with the living earth systems upon which we depend for survival.

The role of Exxon in delaying climate action over the past three decades since its executives were made aware of the consequences of global warming by its own engineers was huge. But it was made possible by the great power that the largest fossil-fuel corporation has had on the society because of its integration with finance capital. Also, the corporate state is totally dependent on fossil-fuel energy for its ability to pursue its projects of social control. The consolidation of power in the central elites of finance, corporate, and political institutions has continued as long as the resources it requires have been exploitable. But we have reached a tipping point. It is more and more difficult for it to continue as resource depletion draws near.[1] The result is also growing economic, social and ecological chaos.

CO2 in Atmosphere, 1985-2015

The confluence of societal control by finance capital, multinational manufacturing and trade, and corporate propaganda has given these giant institutions the ability to continue to extract huge financial profits. But it cannot last much longer. With no serious counter-force, these institutions will drive the world into a state of unprecedented economic, social, and ecological chaos.[2] Finance capital will not be exempt from the turmoil, but more-profit-now is a stronger motive for the executives who deploy it today; their incentives are all short-term. With a few minor exceptions, they will pursue the business of finance as usual – for them it is all about the next quarterly report.

Many signs of impending economic chaos are already apparent. The Great Recession of 2008 has yet to be resolved. Massive government bailouts of the Too Big financial institutions suspended their otherwise inevitable Failure. The risks of failure were thereby handed off to government in the form of massive new public debt. Result: the institutions of Finance Capital grow ever bigger and more dangerous. But the next collapse will not be salvaged by government bailouts. These same institutions have pressured Congress to structure the latest faint efforts to manage national finance capital in such a way that again the people will be left holding the bag. But any efforts by the Fed to stem the chaos next time will not be enough. The real economy and the people are still reeling from the last hit. The financial markets will not accept the next level of extreme debt. The monetary system will likely collapse and economic chaos will follow.

At the same time world financial stability falters, diverse climate disruptions are accelerating in frequency and intensity. The economic consequences of the next few super storms, droughts and floods will be that much more chaotic and of magnitudes beyond societal ability to manage or adapt to the destruction. The confluence of these destabilizing trends will lead to economic, social, and ecological chaos. To be effective, the societal response to this prospect must come from humanity itself; it will not come from the institutions that have caused and continue to cause the catastrophic convergence of destabilizing trends. And, it will not come from the political elites they control. Only we can resist these destructive institutional trends, replace the financial mega-institutions with local and regional public banking, and achieve a level of resilience capable of countering the level of chaos that is already inevitable.

Part III of this 3-part series will deal with the necessity of creating a massive social transformation to counter the destructive force of finance capital on people and planet, inevitably involving a new form of “creative destruction.”
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[1] Michael T. Klare, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources (New York: Picador, 2013) enumerates the key resources, from oil and gas to rare earths and other critical minerals, to agricultural lands, that are fast depleting and subject to shortages, leading to armed conflicts around the world.
[2] As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Christian Parenti gives us a detailed glimpse into the emerging chaos in various ‘at-risk’ nations around the world as extreme weather events, aggravated armed conflicts, and crises of poverty and political-military instability converge, leading to catastrophic conditions for human populations, in his book, Tropic of chaos: climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. (New York: Nation Books, 2011).

Despite the absurd antics of a few fossil-shills in the U.S. Congress, most Americans now recognize the urgency of taking strong actions to mitigate the rapidly growing climate crisis. Mitigation has to mean stopping the flow of CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans so that the damage to ecosystems that is well underway can be slowed. It means bringing earth systems back into balance and relative stability. That is a tall order, which is unfortunately still treated by politicians as just another policy choice. The real choice is between mitigating climate chaos and the extinction of Homo sapiens.[1]

Without huge reductions in total carbon emissions (to near zero), human populations around the world will not be able to adapt to destabilized climate conditions. Growing climate disruptions are already threatening food production and diverse human habitats. Even the World Bank, ordinarily a promoter of fossil-fuel driven international development, has recognized the imminent dangers of continued global warming. But finance capital (the money investment banks and corporations use to finance capital extraction/production projects), whether on Wall Street, in Geneva, or even in Beijing, marches to its own drummer – business as usual.

Whatever rhetoric politicians may deploy trumpeting “personal freedom,” or “free markets,” or “free enterprise,” the locus of control of national and international economies is found in the central banks, large investment banks, and hedge funds around the world. For a very long time, the ideologists of “free market” economics have been able to successfully conflate “democracy” with the control of markets by Finance Capital. When these propagandists demand no public control over finance capital, they usually invoke “personal freedom” or “innovation” by “small business” – and investment needed by the “job creators.”

Political decisions are routinely made in the interests of the largest financial institutions in the world. Because of the creation and flow of money and debt is largely controlled by these powerful institutions, both corporate investment planning and government fiscal planning are almost always consistent with the interests of finance capital. We tend to think of the Federal Reserve as a government institution. It is certainly federally chartered. But it was given the power to create money and allocate government debt in the interests of its member banks – which own it.

Say what you will about the ideals of “democracy” or a “representative government,” it is the giant financial institutions that control the economy, not presidents, not Congress. Interests of finance capital and the fossil fuel corporations are closely aligned. Their actions confirm that. Corporate consolidation in various economic sectors facilitates implicit coordination and control. You do not need a back-room conspiracy when the interests and affiliations of large institutions are integrated.

The economic interests of General Electric, for example, control a large segment of the mass media communications sector. Owning Comcast cable, NBC, Universal Pictures, and Focus Features, helps frame the public consciousness. Content control helps align public beliefs and biases with corporate and financial interests, instilling fear about terror, a putative necessity for perpetual war, and the “threat” of immigration. All these contribute to its bottom line. GE is but one example. Need I mention Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp properties, such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Post? Or the media content controlled by Viacom, Time Warner, Disney, and CBS? GE also manages a large segment of government military and “security” spending, along with a few other “defense” contractors. A mere six media giants control about ninety percent of what we watch, listen to, and read about the world. Most media content is highly consistent with the interests of finance capital.

This institutional structure keeps finance capital in a very comfortable political position. Making big-money-now is the core goal of finance capital. That does not leave much, if any, room for public responsibility. Business as usual for finance capital is to invest in more and more fossil-fuel driven economic growth. It is quite amazing when one thinks about men who manage the world’s largest financial institutions just not getting the threat to human existence that their continued climate-destabilizing practices ensure.

Or do they? Recent revelations about Exxon’s executive “leadership” knowing a great deal about the dangers of global warming posed by continued carbon emissions in the late 1970s reveal a human capability for evil on a planetary scale. With that knowledge, Exxon [2] promoted the lies of “climate denial” contributing to decades of delay on serious climate action. The scale of the ensuing chaos is so great that it is hard to fathom.